Good questions.

The charter is for us to rewrite if it seems useful. At at the same time a charter has to represent a really solid consensus if it is to mean that people will work. It has of course to be sufficiently long lasting to be useful. And of course any work or product has to fit well with the rest of RIPE.

The topic area is obviously important. But the work has been effectively split/shared between the WG and NCC. NCC has sensibly evolved its approach to its roundtables since the beginning, from short-day meetings in Schipol to full days in Brussels.

On the individual points.

1. I always felt some of this to be excessively optimistic for the WG. Governments en masse are not going go turn up for a full RIPE meeting. We do not even have an outbound mailing list.

2. Here NCC has the lead.

3. We have done this - with the active participation f NCC. But it is difficult. And slow. But we know how to do it.

4. The fact that the document dates from 2009 perhaps says it all.

By the way I am still amused by the idea that “enhanced cooperation” was a term coined during the WSIS. “Enhanced cooperation” is a term of the art. It is a EU term and was probably introduced by the EU. Check Wikipedia. It was meant to imply that without overall agreement in the UN, ITU, wherever some countries could still go ahead and cooperate.

I think the goals for the WG should be 

** information sharing when it comes to policy initiatives and regulatory implementation. Problems anticipated and encountered.

** helping with individual action. Draft letters and information on who to contact.

** collective out-reach - with NCC of course.

I think the first point is being dealt with more and more.

It should be obvious that any charter should reflect the realities of what we actually do and what would be reasonable to aspire too.

Gordon


On 24 Jun 2016, at 13:13, Corinne Cath <corinnecath@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

I want to quickly revisit a comment made by Michele, who mentioned that many other working groups have a more steady flow of emails (although we seem to be doing a pretty good job of late) because they are working on specific projects.

I had a look on the RIPE website and found the following description of the workgroup:

The working group discusses the following:

  1. The working group will primarily discuss outreach from the traditional RIPE community to everyone else, especially governments, regulators and NGOs, all of whom we are trying to bring into our community. Topics are not to duplicate issues discussed in other working groups. This working group should complement the other working groups and help participants engage in appropriate work.
  2. The RIPE NCC's current outreach activities will be reported, and the RIPE NCC will seek advice and guidance on future activities. This is to make the discussions more focused - currently the only forum for these discussions is the ripe-list mailing list.
  3. The working group will develop and clarify the RIPE community's position on issues that are of relevance to the public sector or on which a community position has been sought.
  4. The working group will be responsible for maintenance of the RIPE Document produced by the Enhanced Cooperation Task Force, describing the RIPE community, existing policy development processes and outreach programs. The working group explicitly does not have change control over the RIPE Policy Development Process (PDP) itself.

The working group is also an important channel through which the RIPE community can communicate with others in the Information Society. The Chairs are not to become special Ambassadors for RIPE. Their role is the same as other RIPE Working Group chairs, which implies they of course could be asked now and then what the status of the working group is. The process by which RIPE and RIPE NCC respectively coordinate with other bodies (such as the NRO) and communicate (mostly via RIPE NCC or the chair of RIPE) is not changed by creation and existence of this working group.


I was wondering how we are working on issues 1,3, & 4? Perhaps people with a longer history in the group could elaborate so we can discuss how to move forward, and perhaps address some of the concerns raised by Michele?

best,